Hello and welcome to earth! This is the best on-line game I've ever played, and has very advanced options which aren't all easy to figure out. Small changes in your strategy can make quite a difference. That's why this thread is here, to allow for you to ask any quetion you have. There is also a more advanced strategy FAQ thread. It is important for you to read the second and following posts in this thread, as they will provide you with a short guide through the game.

If you have any questions, just create a forum name in the main forum window by pressing the 'register' button and feel free to ask. Most strategy board posters will be eager to answer your questions.

General game concepts:

- Turns: These are what it is all about. The best way to play this game efficiently is to be careful with spending turns. For every 40/25 minutes (depending on the game server) in real life time, you will be granted a turn.

- Your military: This is your most obvious way of getting things done in-game. If you want to: take down another player, help your allies out, get more land or defend yourself. you will mostly have to use your army. You can produce your own or buy one, which depends on your strategy.

- Land is the way to provide an income for yourself. There are different buildings to put on your land. Construction sites are the most important buildings, as they are very costly, but will help you a great deal. Though they may seem a waste of turns at first, they will help you save a lot of them in the long run. For a good build strategy see with 'strategies'

- Tech: Technology is a way of boosting your income without having to increase your land, which may make other players eager to attack you, since they also want more land. You can either produce or buy technology. Some, for example weapons tech are of very good use to every strategy, others are beneficial for specialised playing styles only, ie a 'casher'.

- Allies: These are also an important key to success. If you are a great player but you have lousy allies, this will hold you back! Sometimes it is wise to switch allies, but beware former allies can become enemies or people that offer you an alliance can just want you to open up a 'slot' so they can attack you more easily. The alliance page has slots of different types, two defensive alliance slots, three offense all slots, three technological alliance slots two intel and two trade slots. The defense allies boost your defense up to 100% (depending on their military), the bonus for offense allies is more limited, but also worth it. Research allies give you a share of your allies technological researches, intelligence allies help you in defense from enemy spy operations and trade pacts are just 'empty' alliances, they only ensure peace between you and someone else and enable the foreign aid function (for which you need a formal link to the other player). Make sure your alliances are worth it, because they cost you money!

- Tech: Technology is, for example, a way of boosting your income without having to increase your land, which may make other players eager to attack you, since they also want more land. These are beneficial for specialised playing styles mostly, ie business and residential tech for a 'casher'. Some other techs , for example weapons tech or SDI tech are of very good use to every strategy.
You can either produce technology in research labs or buy it.

- Spy operations: These are used for two purposes. To learn about you opponents country or to sabotage your opponent in it's ways. Well, there's always the 'steal technology' operation, but it is hardly ever used

Now for one of the key concepts of the game! Specialisation:

You should focus on one type production, depending on your strategy/government/tech prices.
For example, one of the easiest strats to learn is the communist industrialis, you are a communism, you only build industrial sites (and construction sites) and you buy mainly industrial tech. This is to take full benefit from the communist +25% military production bonus.
You can also become a casher, where you only build enterprises and residences (and construction sites, everyone needs those), buy mainly business and residential tech and your government will be a republic (for the +15% per capita income bonus) or democracy (for the higher tech level)

How to grab for beginners:

It is best to grab people really low on your scoresheet, who are big in land, but low on (defensive) military units, you may want to spy them and check their news, if they attack a lot, they won't have as much defense as people who do not attack. If they have been in attack the last 24 hours, without having re-attacked themselves, don't bother grabbing them, they won't pay off a lot of land anymore

However, if you want 'bottomfeed' you should look for targets through the 'search' option, give in random numbers/letters and check the news for the found countries. You could also find a smaller person then you, and offer him 'protection' against others if he sends you through HIS scoresheet every day, providing you with juicy targets.

There are other ways of grabbing, but they are a LOT harder (to explain as well, so I'm bailing out) and you'll have plenty of fun experimenting
with 'bottomfeeding'.

By courtesy of Dolphin:

'DI, I would add ...

Etiquette

While most Earth players are friendly and polite, there is a minority that will insult you and/or attack you just because you are new. You can minimize bad interactions by following a few informal rules.

- Landgrabs are part of this game. Expect to have them done on you and expect to do them on other people. Topfeeding (attacking people much larger than you) tends to make enemies the quickest. Bottomfeeding (attacking people much smaller than you) tends to annoy some people, and midfeeding (attacking people around your size) tends to annoy people the least.

- Special attacks (anything besides SS or PS, including any destructive spy operations) are regarded as hostile acts. Missle-based retaliation, in particular, invites more attacks.

- Messaging random people in the game is a good way to make new friends and get helpful tips. Pestering people who don't respond immediately is a good way to get attacked repeatedly by the person you've annoyed and all his friends. In particular, the people in the top 10 likely have all their alliances filled and have many friends in the game. Asking them for alliances is a low-probability proposition, and pretending you know one of them when you don't is a quick way to make powerful enemies.'
divusiulius
Member Sun Jan 10 07:45:31
By courtesy of Starlight, this will help new players from Utopia out a lot:

'the ideal tax rate is almost always 35%
DPA & OPA arent important, its your networth per land that will make people to choose to hit you or not hit you
you'll want to build many construction sites early on, and while in protection you'll want to sell food or military on your private market to finance your buildings
you dont really need any military until turn 175 because you can store up 75 turns before leaving protection at turn 100
go to a strat site (look in one of the sticky threads in this forum for a few decent ones) and look at some 100 turn startups if you want to know how to use the first 100 turns

a troop has a strength of 1 on offense and 1 on defense
a jet has a strength of 2 on offense and 0 on defense
a turret has a strength of 0 on offense and 2 on defense
a tank has a strength of 4 on offense and 4 on defense

for total income
10% enterprise zones & 10% residences combine to give a
1.2*1.2=1.44 or a 44% boost to income
45% enterprise zones & 45% residences combine to give a 1.9*1.9-3.61 or a 261% boost to income

enterprise zones and residences are more effective when they occupy a higher percentage of your land

military bases
BaseUnitCost * GvtMilCost * MilTech * (1 - 0.23333 * MilBases/Land)
this is for military costs on your private market
military bases are also a percentage dependant building, meaning they are more effective when they occupy a higher percentage of your land
they also have no production, and are generally only used for the dropping of stockpiles at the end of the set

Farms
Food Production (Farms * 5.3 + EmptyAcres * 0.4) * GvtFood * AgrTech
farms produce 5.3 bushels, multipled by your tech and government bonus
they are not a percentage dependant building, however the effectiveness of your agricultural tech is based on how much land you have, not how many farms you have, so if you mix farms with other buildings, you'll need to spend a whole lot more on agricultural tech

Oil rigs
Oil production is 2 barrels per rig unless you are a fascist
Its also not a percentage dependant building, and doesnt need tech either
However in most places oil rigs are the most inefficient use of land, and oil prices tend to be low
For oiler to work, you want oil prices in the $250-$350 range

hey been an off and on again player...but havent played in over 5 years. been awhile and forgot the strats..would love to have a complete strat list if possible. noticed there are new servers, started to love the express, only to see that i get land grabbed more there then i do on the others for some reason. would love a farmer to tech strat in full if possible.

Hello everyone! I am an old vet returning. I had a few 1st place finishes in FFA back in the 90s and early 00s, mostly with commie and techer/reseller strats. It has been 10 years since I last played, but it sounds like not much has changed. Are the multis gone?? That would be a welcome change!

Anyone know where I can find the optimum first 100 turns strat (pref commie)? I forgot it. I'm more of a warrior than an economist. I can't figure that stuff out. =P Thanks!

stored turns are normal turns and if you have max turns in hand then next turn goes stored and so on until you spend enough turns and then you get 2 turns every x minutes until you don't have stored turns anymore or you get max turns in hand again.

Man I played Earth 2025 back in the day - probably some 12-14 years ago.......absolutely brilliant - great to see it back, and great to get a reminder of the way it runs - still wetting my feet atm lol

So is there some simplified strategy advise that someone could give me? I just Stared playing. I'm doing ok I think, I'm playing in tournament. My strategy so far has been pretty random but mostly technology research.

if you play techer then destroy farms and others (besides constr sites and some indies to produce spies (indy prod 100% spies)) and sell your techs daily (25-50 bucks lower than current price) and with that money buy bushels and military as needed (don't look fat around other countries with similar networth) and do few turns explores daily to increase production after build up.

If you are going to specialise in technology production the commonest gov.t to choose is Theocracy. You need to maximise the number of turns used to generate tech so you must grab for your land not explore. It is usual to try to identify one good target and to make one PS attack each set of turns. Then you build on the land you grabbed - making sure to demolish buildings and replace them with labs as the higher the proportion of labs the better.

You also need to develop a feel for which tech will sell best. Early on it is Indie and agricultural, later business and residential. Setting your prices well is also a necessary skill and not too easily acquired.

Because you need skill at grabbing, an understanding of which tech sells best when and the time to invest in following the tech market closely techer is not an easy strategy to follow. It is probably better to try farmer or industrialist as a novice. But techer is a lot of fun so after a set or two as an Indie or a farmer by all means try techer.

I'm running a commie gov't and all of my income is coming from military unit sales on the market. How do I increase my market sale size cap? I can only sell a small percentage of my overall military, which is rather frustrating because I'm running out of money with the expenses of a large military.

You cannot change your sale size cap, but make sure you are producing a vast majority jets and turrets. Those are your best units for profitability, utility, and expenses per turn.

Also, don't only buy industrial tech. Invest in business, residential and military tech as well. It is worth it to spend a couple days cash poor to get your tech up, it pays off big time down the road.